Police: Cell phone records led to Tucker Cipriano after family attacked with baseball bats

Jun. 24, 2013

Defense attorney Michael McCarthy assists Mitchell Young with his tie this morning before court started. Young is charged with killing a Farmington Hills man with a baseball bat and nearly killing the man's wife and son. / Regina H. Boone/Detroit Free Press

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Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

When paramedics rushed Salvatore Cipriano into Botsford Hospital’s emergency room in the early morning hours of April 16, 2012, doctors scrambled to stop the bleeding from his massive head injuries and to keep him breathing.

The doctors also called Gift of Life because Salvatore, then 17, was so close to death after being beaten by baseball bats that they were preparing to harvest his organs.

That testimony came Monday in the second week of the murder trial of Mitchell Young, 21. He is accused of beating Salvatore, now 18, and Rose Cipriano, 51, and bludgeoning to death Robert Cipriano, 52.

Botsford emergency room doctor Eric McDowell was the first to treat Salvatore, who had multiple skull fractures and a bloodied and bludgeoned face. Oakland County Assistant Prosecutor John Skrzynski asked whether Salvatore was on death’s doorstep.

“Yes,” McDowell said. “He was very critical.”

Tucker Cipriano, 20, pleaded no contest last week to first-degree felony murder in his father’s death. Police say he and Young broke into the Ciprianos’ Farmington Hills home to steal money for drugs.

Salvatore remains hospitalized 14 months after the attack. Rose Cipriano is at home recovering.

Police contend the men got into the house through the garage. A fingerprint specialist who compared Tucker Cipriano’s prints with those taken from the window said they matched.

But Amanda Crooker of the Michigan State Police crime lab was unable to lift prints off two bloody baseball bats recovered at the scene. Prosecutors contend those aluminum bats were used to beat the family.

On Monday, jurors also learned how police officers tracked down Cipriano, who had slipped out a back door as police were arriving that night.

Farmington Hills police Detective Richard Wehby interviewed Young at nearby Botsford, where he was being treated for a dislocated jaw. He said Cipriano had escaped in his pickup with Young’s cell phone inside, Wehby said.

The cell phone provider and Young’s information led officers to a home in Keego Harbor, where Cipriano had stayed before. He was arrested less than five hours after the attack, barefoot and wearing only jeans.